The Brains Behind Meditation

The human brain can start to show signs of ageing, including a decrease in volume and weight as early as your mid-to-late 20’s. But, it’s possible that you can preserve the brain’s most important tissue, gray matter, through meditation, new research suggests.

Those who meditate regularly can have lower occurrence of grey matter declining as they age, according to a new study at the University of California at Los Angeles and published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Researchers at UCLA looked at 50 participants with years of experience in meditation and compared them to another 50 participants who had no experience. Their objective was to understand the relationship between age and gray matter.

The study participants ranged in age from 24 to 77 years old and there were 28 men and 22 women in both of the groups (those who meditated and those who did not.)

Using brain scans of the participants taken through MRI, the researchers discovered that while gray matter does decline as you age, it is less for people who meditate. The researchers also concluded that they saw effects of meditation that ‘encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.’